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Friday, October 5, 2012

Some things cannot be measured

This week
has been a full week in my classroom. My mom was in subbing for me in the
afternoon while I tested students to determine their reading level. During one
class of my intervention classes we paused instruction to progress monitor for
the day. And here’s what I came away with - assessment has its place, truly I
was fine with these assessments. We use them to determine where our students
are and it drives our instruction.

That
being said, the focus of education in our country is turning more and more to standardized
testing. I have been watching the state of New York as it has moved to the
growth model this year. I am apprehensive about using test data to measure
teachers. Yes, teachers have influence on their students, but so much is beyond
a teacher’s control. My thoughts on can be summed up by what I posted to a
friend on Facebook this week:

Then this morning I saw Penny Kittle tweet about an article (you can read the
article HERE.) This quote spoke out to me:

Child growth and development is not a race, it is a journey.
There are hills and valleys, straight roads, and unexpected curves. Certainly,
we can benchmark certain elements of growth - physical, social, and cognitive -
in the same way we map a journey. We just have to remember that the map is not
the journey and the benchmark is not the goal. The children in our care every
day are not finished - there is nothing summative about them."

Exactly. And here’s what popped into my mind today. Yes, I
supposed you can use students’ test data to measure me as a teacher. You can
even use test data to measure one student against another or a student against
themselves. But you won’t see the whole picture, the whole student, or the
whole teacher.

There are things we do in class you can test and find out if the
information was learned and there are things you can’t. However, in my mind it
boils down to this:My students are so
much more than a number, and so am I. My year with them will be educational. I
will teach them how to grow as readers and writers, yes. But I will also teach
them to have fun, to be kind, to grow as people.

Here are just a few scenes from my classroom this past week. There is no
academic value in most of them, no test to be scored, but I will remember these
events and I think there certainly there is a value in the experiences.

·Eating lunch with a
group of girls and talking about our weekend plans.

Ruby Holler group

·Walking around the
room during independent reading and coming upon a group of boys. One was
sharing Ruby Holler by Sharon Creech and telling the others that they
HAD to read it.

·Listening to 24
fifth graders crazily sing “The Duck Song” as we lined up and other kids poked
their heads in to see what we were doing.

·Watching three
different classes of fifth graders grow silent and then howl with laughter as I
shared the Elephant and Piggie books.

Parade time!

·Standing huddled
together in the rain as we waited for the homecoming parade to begin.

·Laughing each day as
I saw their crazy interpretations of spirit week. (Like backwards day
yesterday)

·Hearing kids shout
“There’s Reese!” when they saw one of our students in the parade.

·Joking with Rye in
my class that “Hat Day” could be “Rye Day” since he tries to wear a hat EVERY SINGLE
DAY in class. He came with about seven hats on his head that day.

·Watching the reunion
float from 1962 come by and laughing as they got the students to cheer ’62!
Over and over.

·Telling the students
that Mark of Athena had been delivered to my house but they were in line
to read it after me. A waiting list formed quickly.

·Seeing a community
come together to celebrate our schools. Go Sages!

So I’m left with this thought. I will be the best teacher I can this year and
every year. And I will teach the whole child – not just what a test can
measure. Because those tests don’t measure how well I know my students and how
much I care about them. If they did, most teachers would score off the charts.
We love our students, we love our jobs, and we work really hard to try and
ensure they grow. So as I stood on the side of a tiny street in a tiny town
today, surrounded by 200+ students from my school shouting for candy, waving at
siblings and parents that passed by on floats, listening to the marching band and
fire truck sirens, my heart was full. These are the moments I will keep close
to me, no matter where the future of education takes us.